friday the 13th

cat eyeswell what do you know, this month’s 13th day falls on a friday. friday the 13th is one of the most famous superstitions around the world. paraskavedekatriaphobia, the fear of friday the 13th, is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a phobia of the number thirteen (13). it is considered to be an unlucky day, if not the unluckiest of days.

silly superstition? propaganda?

i would say that friday, 13 October 2006 is rather one lucky day for me because it’s pay day. yehey! superstition is good but i need cash. hahaha.. .. (then again i’d just hold my breath and cross my fingers coz the 15th falls on a Sunday. policy has it that if it should fall on a holiday or a Sunday, the ‘pay day’ will be ‘moved’ to the nearest work day before that said date.)

fact: did you know that when the first day of a month starts on a Sunday then the 13th day would fall on a Friday?

anyway, read on and find out some more interesting things about friday the 13th.

the name friday

the day Friday was named after Frigg (or Frigga). later she was confused with the goddess of love, Freya, who in turn became identified with Friday. the name “Friday” came from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the etymology of “Friday” has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor “dies Veneris.”

Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. all that changed when Christianity came along. the goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings. http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/friday_the_13th/origins_.shtml

origins

1.) Long before the Bible was written, Friday was considered an important day. Primitive people set aside Fridays as a special time to worship their deities and ask them for good crops, health and happiness. Those who worked on this day were told not to expect ‘good luck’ from the gods. In the bible, Eve tempted Adam with the apple on a Friday. http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/friday_the_13th/origins_.shtml Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday, God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday, the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday, and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th_3.htm

2.) As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches’ coven — and, by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13. http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/friday_the_13th/origins_.shtml

3.) According to Fernsler, numerologists consider 12 a ‘complete’ number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, Fernsler said 13’s association with bad luck ‘has to do with just being a little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or squirmy.’ http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/friday_the_13th/origins_.shtml

4.) Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One, god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the moral of this story to be “Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe,” the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck. http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th_2.htm

5.) One theory, recently offered up as historical fact in the novel The Da Vinci Code, holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago.

The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of “warrior monks” formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995):

“On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force ‘confessions,’ and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.” http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th_4.htm

trivia

  • Heavy metal band Black Sabbath‘s first, self-titled album was released in the UK on Friday the 13th, February 1970.
  • Novelist Daniel Handler also known as Lemony Snicket Released the 13th book of the Series of Unfortunate Events on Friday the 13th of October 2006.
  • Tupac Shakur, Rapper/Actor, was shot and died in Las Vegas on September 13 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th

Technorati Tags:
folklore, holidays, traditions

Similar Posts:

Notice: This article was published on October 10, 2006 and the content above may be out of date.
news & stories